Full academic boycott of Israel: SOAS students vote overwhelmingly in favor

Students and staff at London's School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) have voted overwhelmingly in favor of a full academic boycott of Israel.

The students’ union
ruled on the issue last Friday as part of its Israeli Apartheid
week.

The poll involved over two thousand students and staff members
and the boycott passed by a margin of around 75 percent, with 425
students opposing the motion.

The union has been associated with the campaign for boycott,
divestment and sanctions (BDS) since 2005. The SOAS branch of the
movement featured centrally in the build up to the vote, calling
for the referendum late last year.

One key issue which the BDS movement claims helped to drive the
campaign is the relationship between SOAS and Israel's Hebrew
University.

In a statement on its website BDS said that: “Hebrew
University specifically, with whom SOAS has an institutional
link, is partially built on stolen Palestinian land and has an
army base on its campus.”

“Its complicity in Israeli violations of international law
are well-documented. Hebrew University stood by the Israeli army
during the attack on Gaza.”

Bilal Ahmed, 23, who studies Comparative Political Thought at
SOAS, was involved in the ‘Yes’ campaign. He said the
difficulties of studying Hebrew abroad, which might come with
severing ties with Hebrew University, are
“surmountable.”

Asked why the vote achieved such a landslide, he told RT that
SOAS is a “very left-wing school, and has become a center for
dissecting colonial thinking.”

Currently sat at #SOAS debate on
whether to boycott #israel. A
room of ignorant students who will then vote Israel out of
existence.

Responding to the vote, SOAS Jewish Society president Moselle Paz
Solis told the Jewish Chronicle the move was
“discriminatory.”

She went on to say that the referendum was “divisive and we
believe will lead to a deterioration between Israeli and Jewish
students and other groups at SOAS.”

Dr. Paul O'Connell, who lectures in Law at SOAS, told RT the
boycott is a “tactic to raise awareness,” and that the
eventual decision emerged from “respectful debate involving
both sides” in which the case for a ‘Yes’ vote was “made
persuasively.”

A study commissioned by the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism (CAA)
and published in January found that one in eight people polled
believe Jews used the Holocaust to elicit sympathy. CAA also
claimed Britain is at a “tipping point” with regards to
anti-Jewish sentiment.

Gideon Falter, chairman of CAA, said: “The results of our
survey are a shocking wake-up call straight after the atrocities
in Paris.”

A number of prominent figures also registered their concern,
among them the BBC's director of television Danny Cohen, who said
he had “never felt so uncomfortable as a Jew in the UK,”
following reports that the level of anti-Semitic violence has
risen over the past year.